[1] This bronze cauldron was found on the plain of Marathon near the Soros mound. When it was discovered it contained charred human bones, suggesting that it had been reused as a funerary urn. The same inscription is found also on another similar cauldron and a hydria (IG I3 524 and 525). Stylistically, the cauldrons belong between 525 and 450 BC, and the letter forms are consistent with a date in the 470s or later, while the hydria seems to date after 450 BC. These items seem to be prizes from the Funerary Games (Epitaphios agon), which, from 479 BC onwards, were organised annually by the polemarch in honour of those who died in the Persian Wars. This was also the occasion when the annual Funeral Oration was spoken for the dead in the year’s conflicts, cf. IG I3 1147 n. 1.